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Diversity is Good… So Are School Libraries.

I was saddened to read this article today in the New York Times, about a neighborhood school with forty percent of the children receiving free lunch that was struggling to save its school library. By digging deep and rallying their community the students of PS 363 in New York City raised the money to save their library and keep their school library program going for another year.

I am lucky enough to live in a district with reasonably well-funded schools, due to a referendum that passed a few years ago. This allows the schools to offer a school library program staffed with professional school librarians not just during the year but also for several days during the summer. The article in the Times notes that while diversity is considered to be a benefit of a public school education, cuts in education are creating casualties in schools like PS 363 (aka The Neighborhood School), where the socioeconomic diversity is enough to make fundraising efforts difficult, but not quite extreme enough to qualify for extra federal funding.

We’ll never escape the inequities of school funding. Some schools will have extraordinary resources available to them, and others will struggle. One way to even the playing field is to make sure that schools like PS 363 have great school library programs staffed by professional librarians- there are strong correlations to significant improvements in student achievement and literacy, for kids at all socioeconomic levels (you can check out Scholastic’s excellent report summarizing the research here– the school also has a link to the report on their fundraising webpage).  Where is the money going to come from? PS 363 showed that supporting  vital, if unfunded, educational programs requires a community effort. It is amazing to me how the school community and surrounding neighborhood pulled together and saved the library program for another year.  The only way it’s going to happen is if each of us gets personally involved in saving an imperiled school library, regardless of the situation the students, and school, find themselves in.

 

Posted on June 7, 2012 by , Reply

Thank a School Librarian Today!

I missed saying anything about National School Library Month in April, which is sad, since I am a school librarian (if not a practicing one). The PTO here makes a big deal about Teacher Appreciation Week, which was in the beginning of May, and classroom teachers get appreciated that week, but somehow, when I taught (and you have to be a licensed teacher to be a school librarian) the school librarian wasn’t usually remembered (except for a few extremely special kids, who I will never forget). And I fell a little behind there too.

So now, here, we are headed into the last week of school. Yes, I know the rest of the world is in school until sometime in June, but here, school is out on Thursday. So my opportunity to say anything to my son’s school librarian this year is coming to an end very soon.

At the beginning of the year, the kids at my son’s school were supposed to choose from a selection of age-appropriate books for kindergarten. My son, used to picking out his own books, wanted the shelves where the monsters were and went bananas. I know because I got a call at home. We talked for awhile, and concluded that reading all kinds of books, with and without monsters, was the way to go. And he started to bring all kinds of books home, some with monsters, some without. I see this as a good thing- reading should widen the world beyond just one topic, and there are so many other things to read about in addition to monsters! He began to bring home some longer books, and was allowed to keep them for more than the allotted week while he studied them intensely. And then he discovered the Crestwood Books movie monster books. Either he was really burrowing for something or she found them for him, because they’re in a nondescript, if very durable, school library binding, and not the original attention-drawing, orange covers. Many libraries weed their collections frequently to keep the collections current and to remove items that are falling apart and I am thankful that she kept these for my son to discover. Even though I had to tell him we couldn’t read them at bedtime because the pictures were too scary. Even though his grandmother told me the books were “gross”. He has loved them so much! And he has had the opportunity to discover them, learn from them, create new drawings and stories, and read the books again and again because she kept them and put them in his hands.

Now, he was already an enthusiastic reader, and a pretty good one, considering that he is a kindergartener. But imagine the fire the right book can light in a child who doesn’t like to read or who struggles with it. The book, or the idea within, that lights that fire, doesn’t always come from the hands of a librarian. But it can.

So take a moment to thank your school librarian and say how much you appreciate her (or him). It doesn’t happen enough, and while your child might not say anything much at home, you can never underestimate the impact a school librarian can make.

Thank you, every single one.

Posted on May 20, 2012 by , Reply

Monster Movie Month Is Coming Up: Are You A Monster Kid?

The Monster Kids documentary Kickstarter project got me thinking about what it means to be a Monster Kid. When the classic monster movies first came out, you could only see them in theaters, for a limited time. My dad, born in 1945, might have seen Godzilla in the theater, but I’m not sure how available monster movies really were after they finished their movie theater runs. Maybe you could see them on television, but it wasn’t like you could get these movies on demand.

The seventies and eighties rolled along and with them came a series of books I have encountered over and over in many, many libraries; the Crestwood Books Monster Movie Series. Here’s an article from Rue Morgue about these books tribute to them from James at Cinemassacre. You can see that they influenced him not only to become a monster-loving kid but also a reader, a writer, and now a no-frills moviemaker. In terms of reader engagement, it doesn’t get any better than that.

One thing he talks about in his video is how impossible it was to actually SEE the movies he was reading about. These books were responsible for introducing a whole new generation of children to monster movies, movies that weren’t really even available for them to see. Unfortunately these books are no longer in publication, and most of them were so well loved that you might not find them in your library today. I can tell you how beat up they were when I was weeding library books fifteen years ago- I had to fight to keep them on the shelf. Bless the wonderful school librarian at my son’s elementary for keeping them safely on the shelf- they have had the same exact effect on him that they did on kids my age (or just a little older). Midnight movie hours also became popular with a certain crowd. There were a lot of these shows that were local, and Sammy Terry, the host of the show here, was certainly memorable- heck, now he’s considered part of local history. Of course, as we moved on into the eighties a lot of movies started to be available on VHS, but that doesn’t mean they were easily available. My dear husband went through some rather convoluted methods to get VHS copies of his favorite Japanese monster movies, not an easy thing before the Internet was available. Maybe you remember the advent of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show that encouraged you to videotape it and send the tapes around to other fans of B movies, grainy copy after grainy copy.

As we moved into the nineties, it got easier to order movies, first on VHS tapes and then on DVDs, because it became possible to order online. Dedicated websites, Youtube and streaming video have radically changed the availability of information and of the movies themselves. Stuff that used to arrive at my house in envelopes from Hong Kong can now be accessed through Netflix streaming. And while it’s not USUAL to have a Godzilla obsessed six year old, said child can watch videos from the movies on Youtube, DVDs or streaming video. He can explore Toho Kingdom and find pictures of movie monsters using Google Image Search. He can learn about Ray Harryhausen just by typing the name into a search box in Wikipedia. He can even borrow his dad’s videocamera and film his own Godzilla movies. The idea that sixty years ago none of this was possible is incomprehensible to him. Only seeing movies in the theaters? Trading videotapes? No internet to watch videos of the Zone Fighter Monsters?

Note to librarians: even with the Internet, and multiple options for watching movies, he keeps checking out those Crestwood Monster Movie books. Having now brought home the Mad Scientists book he now knows more about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man than I do. So if you have them, for gosh sakes KEEP THEM!

Today’s Monster Kids have incredible resources at their fingertips and don’t even know it. But what they do have, still, is that love of monsters and the creativity it inspires. Whether you saw the original Godzilla in the theater, learned about him from the Crestwood Movie Monster books, were mesmerized by midnight movies, traded videotapes with other monster movie lovers, or saw giant monsters for the first time on Netflix streaming, there is the engagement and enthusiasm that teachers and librarians hope for when it comes to reading, understanding, and taking it to the next level. And that’s awesome. And in honor of that, this year we’ll be making July our Monster Movie Month. Got a favorite monster movie or idea for a book/movie tie in? Comment below or email us at monsterlibrarian@monsterlibrarian.com

Posted on May 19, 2012 by , Reply
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